Family archives
Bring a box of creased, faded prints of parents and grandparents back to something you can share with relatives or print again for the wall.
Old Photo Restoration
Repair the damaged print your family cannot replace, and bring back the version worth framing, sharing and passing on without losing the people you remember.
Before / after
One damaged scan, one repaired print
A real repair run on this page’s model: drag the divider across a 1960s family snapshot and watch the deep crease, scratches, torn corners and yellowing disappear while the four faces, the house and the path remain the moment this family remembers.
Drag to compare before and after
AI repair tool
What is AI old photo restoration?
It takes the physical damage off without reimagining the photograph — which is why it is not sharpening. A blurry digital snapshot needs detail invented; a damaged print already has the picture, it just has a crease across the middle, white scratch lines, chipped corners, brown foxing stains, and the yellow-orange cast that decades of light left behind. Those come off. The picture itself is left completely alone.
Image tool
Traditionally the work meant hours in Photoshop with the clone-stamp and healing brush, layer by layer, or paying a retoucher forty dollars and waiting a week per image. Here you upload the scan, the model reads which marks are damage and which are the photograph, and it rebuilds only the damaged parts in one pass.
On Kavel it runs on the Nano Banana image model, so a repaired print comes back in a single generation. Faces, poses, clothing and composition are left untouched, so what you get is the same moment, undamaged.
Creative engine
How the repair comes together
Upload a scan, confirm what needs repairing, choose the format and resolution, and the credit estimate updates before you generate.
1 scan
Scan in
Damage removed
What changes
Faces kept
What doesn't
Physical damage, not softness
Creases, scratches, tears, dust, foxing stains and missing emulsion are the target. Softness is a different problem with a different fix, and a tool that treats them as the same thing tends to sharpen the damage along with the picture.
Tone and contrast recovered
The yellow-brown cast of an aged print is corrected back toward natural skin tones and contrast is recovered in faded areas. That is usually the change families notice first, because it is what makes a face look alive again.
Leaves faces, poses, clothing and composition untouched, so the repaired print is the same moment, undamaged. Old photo damage and softness are different problems: the HD photo converter sharpens a picture that is intact but blurry, and the model comparison shows how the two engines behind old photo work differ on one prompt.
How to use
Repair a damaged print in three steps
From a creased scan to a clean print, with the cost shown before you commit.
Scan or photograph the print
Lay the print flat under even light and capture the whole frame. A straight, evenly lit scan gives the model the most of the original to work from — avoid angled phone shots with glare across the surface.
Say what needs repairing
Name the damage you can see — a crease down the centre, water stains in one corner, a missing edge, colour that has gone orange. Specific direction repairs more than a generic request.
Check credits and generate
Confirm the estimate, generate the repair, and download at full resolution for printing. If a run fails it is refunded, so you only spend credits on the repairs that actually come back.
Who it's for
Who repairs an old print
Family archives, house clearances, a single surviving photo of someone.
A memorial or anniversary
Repair the one surviving picture of someone who has passed, so the version the family keeps is not the damaged one.
Genealogy and local history
Clean up scans for a family tree, a heritage project, or an archive where the damage is getting in the way of the record.
Answers
Photo repair FAQ
Common questions about repairing damaged and faded prints with Kavel.
No, and the difference matters. Sharpening invents detail that a soft digital file never captured. This repairs damage on a print that was fine when it was taken — creases, scratches, tears, stains, fading. If your scan is undamaged but soft or low-resolution, use the HD photo converter instead; it is built for that job.
No — that is the rule the tool works to. Faces, expressions, poses, clothing and background are the anchor; only the damage is rebuilt. Adding "keep every face unchanged" to your prompt locks that in even tighter.
No. This runs entirely in the browser with free credits to start, so there is no clone-stamp work, no layer masks and nothing to install. That is the main reason people arrive here after searching for a Photoshop tutorial — the manual method works, it just takes hours per image.
Creases, scratches, dust, foxing, torn corners, water stains and heavy colour fading all repair well—restore everything the surviving scan still holds and bring the photograph back to the family.
Repair and colourisation are separate jobs. This tool restores what the print originally held, including recovering colour that has faded away. Adding colour that was never captured is a different request and a different result; ask for it explicitly if that is what you want.
Flat, square to the camera or scanner, evenly lit, and framed to include the whole print including its border. Glare across the surface and a steep angle both cost the model information it cannot recover. A flatbed scan beats a phone photo, but a careful phone photo works.
The credit estimate appears before you generate and updates with the format and resolution you pick, so you always see the cost first. Failed runs are refunded automatically. New accounts start with free credits, which is enough to repair a print and judge the result before spending anything.
Yes — reprinting for a frame or a family album is one of the most common uses. Generate at the highest resolution available so the file holds up at print size, and keep your original scan; the repair is a new file, not a replacement for the archive copy.
One purchase, and everything you make here is yours to post
Any plan or pack — even a $19.90 one — unlocks a clean copy of every image you have made here, starts each new run instantly, and refunds one that fails.
50% OFFYour first purchase is half price
Starter
$8.33/month
$100/year billed yearly
- 23,100 Credits Per Year · 1,925/mo
- Up to 2,310 videos
- Up to 4,620 images
- No Queue, Instant Start
- HD, Watermark-Free Downloads
- Commercial Use License
20% OFF - Save $70.8
Creator
$24.0/month
$288/year billed yearly
- 75,000 Credits Per Year · 6,250/mo
- Up to 7,500 videos
- Up to 15,000 images
- No Queue, Instant Start
- HD, Watermark-Free Downloads
- Commercial Use License
40% OFF
Pro
$30.0/month
$360/year billed yearly
- 94,500 Credits Per Year · 7,875/mo
- Up to 9,450 videos
- Up to 18,900 images
- No Queue, Instant Start
- HD, Watermark-Free Downloads
- Commercial Use License
Free plan
- Get 100 credits a week with check-ins
- 20 Free Credits with login
- Up to 2 videos
- Up to 4 images
- No Card, No Account
- Free Images And 4s Videos When Signed In
- Free Engine Every Day
Pay safely and securely with
Payments are processed by Stripe over an encrypted checkout. Your card details are handled by Stripe and are never stored by Kavel.
More tools
Other rescues for damaged photos
Repair the irreplaceable original first — then sharpen, finish or bring the restored photograph to life.
Repair your old photo
The damage leaves; the people you remember stay at the heart of the photograph. A run that fails hands its credits back, so repair the print with confidence.
